An evening of passion-stirring operatic favourites and romantic Neapolitan ballads with Gavan Ring, hailed as a ‘lyric tenor carrying a potent ring’. (Opera).

Laughter and tears come early with the exhilarating Overture to Rossini’s comic masterpiece The Barber of Seville and the achingly beautiful Act III Prelude to Verdi’s tear-jerking La traviata, whose ‘O mio rimorso’ is one of opera’s great declarations of love.
The loss of love prompts Macduff’s dramatic ‘Ah, la paterna mano’ from Verdi’s Macbeth as he vows vengeance on the tyrant for his murdered wife and children.

Puccini’s sublimely moving elegy Crisantemi is a heart-rending display of concentrated grief, ‘Che gelida manina’ from La bohème, the finest lyric opera ever written, a tender but titanic declaration of love.

Soundtrack to countless commercials, the dreamy Intermezzo from Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana is a slow waltz of bewitching loveliness.

And from Italy’s city of song, Naples, proof that opera doesn’t have all the best tunes in popular romantic classics such as O Sole Mio, Torna a Surriento, L’alba separa dalla luce l’ombra and Leoncavallo’s joyful greeting to a new Mediterranean day, Mattinata.

WATCH: www.rte.ie/culture
LISTEN: https://www.rte.ie/lyricfm/the-lyric-concert-with-paul-herriott/